Chapter 22 Ramen and Chill
Ramen and Chill
ELLA
When I’m frustrated with my family, I’m tempted to set up a Rube-Goldburg machine in the ballroom to make my feelings clear.
“Actions,” I would thump them each on the head with a long stick as the machine spun and lit on fire and rolled and exploded at each stage, propelled by Newton’s irresistible laws, “have consequences.”
No matter how much power Marc claims I have, I can’t change everything.
He said he would text. Why isn’t he texting? I figure that basketball takes an hour. When it’s over, does he sit in the sauna with Noah and the others and talk about his feelings? Is there a trust circle and a talking stick?
It’s almost midnight when I throw myself into bed. He should be home, thinking up ways to tell me he’s sorry about how he left things. I stare at my phone screen, one of my trash panda stuffies shoved under my head, and begin to type.
Are you home?
Delete.
Ramen and chill?
Delete.
I take a breath and type very slowly. I’m sorry for calling you so many names. I’m sorry for calling him even one. Feelings crowd the back of my throat and I bite back a curse. Stultes es, he always knows what I need to hear.
My finger hovers over the send button when a text bubble pops up on the screen. Marc. I was telling you how to live your life. I know how much you hate that.
Then, Forgive me?
I exhale, a weight rolling off my shoulders. I do not deserve his patience.
I type, I didn’t know being in a relationship would mean saying sorry so much. I stare at the words. We aren’t in a relationship. My heart hurts. Delete.
I roll onto my stomach and tap the video button, prepare my pleasant smile and smooth my hair.
“Marc—” It ends in a squeak. He’s shirtless again.
I drop the phone and hear his laugh.
Our families have mixed for decades, taking summer holidays together at Outingen Huis and winter trips to Uncle Georg’s private island for much-needed sun.
He’s been captured at beaches around the world by paparazzi using telephoto lenses.
His abs are no foreign, undiscovered country, but I return to them each time like a long-exiled soul, kneeling on my native soil with tears of gratitude. I’m back. I am so back.
“Are you going to put something on?” I grit, righting the phone.
“I don’t think I am.” He grins, hitching up on one arm.
He did a short stint as a male model after being scouted in Seong, and I’ve always been impressed by their impeccable hotness pipeline.
One must admire an entire country dedicated to the proposition that they’re not going to waste their baddies on a cubicle farm.
Anyway, when he stretches like that, I know he knows what he’s doing.
“I know you like it,” he says.
“What makes you so sure—?”
Marc gives the phone a bland stare.
I look in the four cardinal directions and remind myself that there’s no future in ogling Marc van Heyden. “How was basketball?”
“Noah had no idea I’d been making out with his little sister, if that’s what you’re asking.”
My cheeks flame. I should be past this. I should be able to meet Marc on the well-lit ground we’ve decided upon—dead-end kisses, lots of fun, no complicated feelings.
It’s an arrangement as chic as a wedding reception I attended last year for one of the Saint Sissela girls where the only refreshments were bowls of cigarettes.
I tamp the blush down. “I was asking about basketball.”
“We crushed him.”
Okay, hot. “Do you always crush him?” I ask, snuggling into my bed.
He watches me, a hand kneading the back of his neck. “I wasn’t in a mood to lose.”
When Marc shifts the pillow, his shoulder rolls into the frame. I bite my lip to stop a second squeak. This chat should have stayed a text.
Speaking of… “I was in the middle of messaging you,” I admit.
His lips tilt. “Yeah? Tell me what you were going to say.”
He’s flirting on purpose, certainly not part of the deal. That we’re attracted to one another ought to be enough of a disaster, given how desperately I need out of the royal way of life and how committed he is to the oath he made to prop it up. He doesn’t need to torment me with flirting.
“I called you names,” I lie. “Kraken of the Silicon Sea.”
“Oh, we’re doing this?” He has a smile I never see when he’s looking at anyone else.
“Hermit King of Lindenholm.”
Marc squints an eye and his hand seesaws. “Mid.”
“A man with gigabytes where his heart should be…”
His smile tips up, and the connection between us is so clear I see every pixel of his neck. “I said I was sorry. I am sorry. You were only trying—” I say.
“I know.”
I know. With his words, my heart, like a watchful shieldmaiden, lays down her spear and unbuckles her armor.
She is unprepared for the piercing needle of grief that follows.
Her knees buckle. Marc has said nothing about love.
It’s as it should be. This deal of ours—the emotional equivalent of strapping himself into a safety harness—includes a promise to leave, and I’m going to fight to uphold my end of the bargain.
“Mama is throwing a party for my birthday,” I tell him, throat thick with feelings I can’t begin to name. “Next week.”
“I know when your birthday is. Is this an invitation? It better be. I have a thing with the birthday girl.” His expression warms, and I clutch a fistful of flannel pajamas where my pearls would be. I can’t sell my soul for a ‘thing’.
“Is Freja coming?” he asks.
“We’re a package deal.”
In an attempt to stop thinking about Marc so much, I spend the whole week tracking the movements of the prime minister, logging the official information, and looking for patterns. If he has a say in where we’re supposed to be, I want to know where he is.
On another screen, I break the source code for my app, reconfigure the architecture, and scroll through ReadHe threads on AI integration.
On still another, I nurture my SquadRun team, coaching dragonslayer2 through a tricky side quest and acting as a listening ear for Staggering_Indifference as she recounts an effort to get rent money from her live-in boyfriend while maintaining her image as totally chill, fine with whatever.
Marc is impossible to put out of my mind.
I gave him the security code for my suite and he abuses it.
One morning he wakes me up with a hot pastry and an iced Americano from La Baiser Chaleureux, an upscale bakery in the heart of Handsel, nowhere near his office or flat.
He slips up to my room and gives me such a fierce kiss that I’m clutching my bed clothes as he goes without a word.
Later, he sends me an article about tech stacks for my app development.
I watch him in a broadcast from the Grousehof, standing in the ornate legislative chamber with the rest of parliament to hear the opening arguments in Freja’s case.
He wears his government robes—a heavy black cloak billowing back from a fitted waistcoat.
Thick gold embroidery marches across the full sleeves and neck, and tiny buttons run from his chin to his waist, indicating his hereditary status as Hochneerheid—the High Lord of Sondmark.
The costume should denote that he is ornamental—a throwback to a bygone age—or that he lost the power his ancestors wielded as their right.
It should proclaim that the rest of parliament—elected properly and shuffling in with white synthetic wigs and short red capes, bowing to the empty, golden throne at the head of the room—are his betters. The idea is laughable.
They speak Freja’s name and title, recounting her list of crimes, and present the formal petition to open an inquiry.
The members of parliament murmur their assent with huddled heads, and I slam out of the media room, muttering my excuses to my family as I go.
I am tense and suffocated and scared. I don’t even question my destination when I log it at the security gate.
I drive to Marc’s flat and wait for him in the front hall until he returns from the Grousehof.
He opens the door wearing an ordinary suit and tie, and freezes on the threshold, a garment bag hooked over his shoulder.
For a second, he looks at me in a way that clears the space between us, wiping away family obligations and old habits, future dreams and exit plans.
My breath sticks in my throat, and I rush to fill the space with words.
“Your formal robes are wasted on the government,” I say, stumbling back to lean against an entry table. “I had to come and see what they look like in person.”
He shifts the weight of the bag, the intense, earth-shattering expression ebbing so slowly from his face that I wonder if I imagined it.
“Where else would I wear a thing like this?” he asks, wiggling the hanger.
“MangaCon? Dragon Summit?” For me? Around the house?
His eyes dance but he utters a soft complaint. “It took forever getting out of it. All those buttons—”
I push him toward the bedroom. “The sooner you start changing into your official robes, the sooner I’ll be culturally edified.”
He goes, but then sticks his head around the doorjamb—roguish now. “Are we renegotiating our deal?”
I lift my eyes. “In your dreams.” In my dreams. “Make yourself decent and I’ll help with the rest.”
When he returns, he’s shrugging the heavy article over bare, corded shoulders, and I gaze fixedly on the skyline of Handsel.
“Decent, I said.”
“I’m decent for a swim,” he laughs, halting less than a handspan away, counting on his proximity and hotness to do the rest. “And you promised to help.”
It’s a punishing exercise in self-control. I vow not to play so near to the fire next time as I push one heavy gold button at a time through its loop, up and up and up. His skin flinches away when I brush against it, and we breathe our laughter even though I don’t know what’s funny.